Twitter has suspended the account of Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab insurgents, just a few days after they posted photographs of a French commando they killed and threatened to execute Kenyan hostages.
The account cannot be accessed now and Twiitter has not commented on it. The action was effected on Friday. Twitter’s terms of service indicate that does not allow specific threats of violence against others in its posts.
However, Somali and Arabic-language accounts of the terror linked organisation has not been suspended. Al-Shabaab termed the suspension of their English account as, “evidence of the freedom of expression in the West.”
On January 16, Al-Shabaab indicated that it planned to kill Denis Allex, a French hostage who was the subject of a botched rescue attempt by French military last week. Al-Shabaab later used Twitter to announce the death of Alex though the French military believe that Allex died during the botched operation to rescue him.
Al-Shabaab has blamed the closure of the account on “the cry of the French and Kenyans.”
The terror linked organisation further bragged that its has “thousands of ways to pass our message…it is unfortunate that organisations that call themselves the guardians of freedom of expression are silent about the closure of our twitter account,” he said.
On Wednesday Al-Shabaab used Twitter to post a link to a video of several Kenyan hostages they said they will execute in 3 weeks if the Kenyan government does not release Somalia terror suspects it is holding.
The Al-Shabaab Twitter account is believed to be operated by a US citizen, Omar Hammami, from the state of Alabama who joined Al Shabab about six years ago. Early this month, Omar claimed that Al-Shabaab wanted him dead. He later tweeted that the terror organisation fear being viewed negatively by the media.
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